Re. Betsy Sharkey and "2016: Obama's America"

Here's the Letter to the Editor I sent out this morning in response to an article in today's Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times by film critic Betsy Sharkey ("Is it Straight Talk, or Propaganda?").

Betsey Sharkey's beef with Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America" is that it doesn't fit the criteria of a documentary and should be classified as propaganda instead. She compares D'Souza's work to other documentaries, including Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" which, though she concedes was not objective, at least met the criteria of the genre, which is that "whatever truths emerge, they were ultimately forged by the process, not set in stone beforehand." Michael Moore's thesis wasn't set in stone beforehand?  He's a bona fide Bush hater. Starkey's kidding herself if she thinks Moore didn't have an agenda in mind from the get-go. If Starkey doesn't want to consider "2016" a documentary in the true sense of the word, fine. Let's call it something else, "dramatized non-fiction," say. But let's not pretend that Moore's work is anything other than propaganda. And let's also not forget what D'Souza has done in dramatizing his book. Rather than objectively examine Obama the candidate in 2007/08 and now Obama incumbent running for re-election, the dominant media have failed in their stewardship. It's people like D'Souza who are doing the job the media apparently refuse to do. For that, I (for one) give him a standing ovation.